1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of loading a film roll, i.e., a roll of elongate photographic photosensitive film, onto a film unwinding shaft of a film producing apparatus, and a film producing and packaging system.
2. Description of the Related Art
For producing and packaging a photographic photosensitive film, it has been customary to perform various steps including the steps of producing a film of given length, winding the film, placing the wound film into a film cartridge, and inserting the film cartridge into a case.
These various steps are carried out by a station comprising a film supply unit for unwinding a film roll and cutting the unwound film to a film of given length, a film coiling unit for coiling the film of given length on a spool thereby to produce a film coil, a cartridge producing unit for staking a cap on an end of a tubular cartridge blank sheet thereby to produce a cartridge with one open end, an assembling unit for inserting the film coil into the cartridge and staking another cap on the open end of the cartridge thereby to produce an assembled cartridge, and an encasing unit for placing the assembled cartridge into a case and attaching a case cap on an open end of the case thereby to produce a packaged product.
In the above station, the film roll is manually loaded on a film unwinder shaft of the film supply unit for mass-producing packaged products. However, since the film roll is relatively heavy, it is considerably tedious, time-consuming, and labor-intensive to manually lift the film roll and load the film roll on the film unwinder shaft.
The film supply unit, the film coiling unit, and the assembling unit are housed in a dark room to prevent the film from being exposed to external light. The dark room needs to have a control console manually operable by the operator for effectively switching between lots, repairing various devices, and performing maintenance activities.
The control console holds a control circuit, switches, display units, etc. with a number of electric cables connected thereto. Because these electric cables extend from the control console into the dark room through openings defined in the control console, external light tends to leak into the dark room through the openings. Therefore, films of given length which are being processed in the dark room may possibly be exposed to the leaking external light.